This indicator shows the percentage of inventorships created by women during the four-year period ending in the reference year shown (e.g., the period represented by reference year 2021 is the four-year period 2018-2021). The absolute number of inventorships used in computing this indicator is based on fractionalised counts of patent applications between their corresponding inventors: for example, if a patent application involves 10 inventors, each inventor is attributed an equal fraction of the inventorship (i.e. 1/10 of the invention).
The data is collected from the She Figures publications. These publications investigate the level of progress made towards gender equality in research & innovation (R&I) in Europe. It is the main source of pan-European, comparable statistics on the representation of women and men amongst PhD graduates, researchers and academic decision‑makers.
Data on patents in the She Figures publication are extracted from the European Patent Office (EPO) Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT), which covers patent data from over 150 offices worldwide. The required information for calculating the indicator is available in PATSTAT: inventor names with addresses and technology domain (sections of the International Patent Classification).
Available flags:
| b | break in time series | c | confidential |
| d | definition differs, see metadata | e | estimated |
| f | forecast | i | see metadata |
| m | imputed | n | not significant |
| p | provisional | r | revised |
| s | Eurostat estimate | u | low reliability |
| x | dropped due to insufficient sample size | y | unreliable due to small sample size |
| z | not applicable |